


Habituation

by Magpied_Spider



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: 4 + 1 things, Every School Has Quadrangles And Couryards Right?, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Ignoring Japanese Naming Conventions Because That Is A Rabbit Hole I Do Not Wish To Go Down, Yami Bakura is Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Fic, gratituous references to card games, references to medicinal drugs that have not been fully researched, ryou has a lot of thoughts and he has no idea how right he is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5044624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magpied_Spider/pseuds/Magpied_Spider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate title: Four Times Yuugi And Ryou Introduced Themselves To Each Other, And One Time They Knew Exactly Who The Other Was.</p><p> </p><p>  <em>It wasn’t the first time he’d been to Domino City, but he’d left when he was seven, after Amane died, and most of what Ryou remembered was from stories his father had occasionally regaled, rather than actual memory.</em><br/>New city meant a new school, a new school meant new friends.<br/>That was always the theory in popular media, but Ryou was sure that wasn’t how it was meant to work for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Habituation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Akanue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akanue/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I haven't seen/read Yu-Gi-Oh in so long, so any and all errors you see according to timelines and events are the direct result of my ignorance of canon.  
> I loved the work you wrote for me last YGOME, Akanue, so I hope you like this one!

1:

Archaeologists, while known for many things, are not known for the excellent caretaking of young children, which was why while the “annual-if-we-can-get-enough-people-to-come-along-party” was taking place, Yuugi Motou, aged six, was wandering the halls of Domino City Museum.

He had a can of fizzy drink in one hand, and a pack of cards in the other, and was hoping to find someone to play with – none of the adults had seemed very interested.

A flash of movement caught his attention, and he turned to look down an alcove, where there was a boy and a girl standing, apparently already up to something.

They looked up, and the girl moved to stand behind her brother.

“Hi.” The boy spoke softly, but not shyly. “I’m Ryou, this is my sister Amane. What’s your name?”

“Yuugi,” Yuugi replied. “Are your parents archaeologists?”

Ryou nodded. “Our Dad, yeah. We’re running away because the food’s boring and the drinks taste nasty.”

Yuugi gave his own a sip and winced. “Yeah.” He put the can down in the corner, so that it wouldn’t get knocked over.

“Do you two know how to play snap?”

The hours went on, and the children weren’t missed until almost midnight, time whiled away with laughter and games that grew more and more complex.

Memories of childhood blur as the years go past: many train trips become a single long journey; adults introduced to children as family friends become strangers when met outside that context.

In the same way, neither of the children in that meeting who survived their childhood would live to recall more than the knowledge of a very specific amalgamation of snap, spoons, and speed, which soon devolved and was lost to the mists of time.

 

2:

It wasn’t the first time he’d been to Domino City, but he’d left when he was seven, after Amane died, and most of what Ryou remembered was from stories his father had occasionally regaled, rather than actual memory.

New city meant a new school, a new school meant new friends.

That was always the theory in popular media, but Ryou was sure that wasn’t how it was meant to work for him.

After all, the last friends he’d had were…

“I’m Ryou Bakura,” he replied to the boy.

“Cool. I’m Yuugi Motou,” the boy – Yuugi – replied. He was the shortest in the class, even if you took his hair into account, which had spikes that added at least another ten, twenty centimeters to his height.

They were walking through the quadrangle, which was on the way to the basketball courts – most of their classmates seemed headed in that direction. “Do people usually eat on the courts?”

“Huh?” Yuugi seemed lost in thought for a moment, but he snapped back to reality quickly. “Oh, yeah. Lots of us play basketball, and it’s usually pretty fun to watch.”

Ryou eyed the boy, and tried not to sound too dubious as he asked, “Do you ever play?”

Yuugi shrugged. “I mean, I try, but I’m kinda short, you know? But I’m always up for a game.”

Before he could stop himself, Ryou found himself asking, “Ever play RPG campaigns?” Even as he said it, he was kicking himself.

It wasn’t because he was embarrassed – there were two ways to conduct oneself as a nerd, and Ryou had long learned that he vastly preferred the “yes, this is a nerdy thing, what of it?” approach to the secretive, “oh no, I’m just holding this for my friend” approach – but because anyone who was his friend had later turned up… not as part of the waking world.

Not dead; if they had been dead he wouldn’t dance around it with euphemisms: his mother was dead, his sister was dead, and he liked to think they were in heaven, but the only thing he knew for sure was they were buried in the ground and rotting away, no, after playing RPGs with Ryou, all those he considered his friends fell asleep and still haven't woken up.

Ryou wasn’t sure if he wanted to risk it again with this new city.

Yuugi shook his head in answer. “You could show me later - it sounds fun! - but for now,” he shook out his pockets: dice, pencils, suspicious-looking pieces of chewing gum that may or may not have been already chewed, and a box of cards. "Just for lunch, I bet we can rustle up some other people to play Pigs in a Barn."

 

3:

He’s not sure if he’s welcome, really – Yuugi’s friends were all nice enough, even after the disaster that was the attempt at a campaign at Ryou’s house, but he has a feeling that it was more politeness than genuine friendship.

And while he’s always known that Yuugi was _competitive_ at games, sometimes it feels like the boy playing cards against the other people on the island was someone completely separate from Ryou’s friend. (Can he call him a friend, after all that’s already happened?)

He catches himself, at one point: it’s just after a duel’s finished, and Yuugi’s standing taller than he usually would, a kind of easy confidence in his voice that Ryou almost envies.

Ryou catches his eye and waves – there’s a bit of a crowd, but Yuugi’s always been adept at finding his friends in the tight-packed halls or a busy shopping mall. He’ll be seen.

Yuugi looks right at him, and doesn’t acknowledge him, eyes passing over as if he were just another onlooker.

And it’s a warm day, but Ryou feels a chill.

 

4:

He’s a bit hazy on the details of how he got here, to be honest: one stint in a graveyard with a bit of storytelling and now, somehow, he was on an airship with the Battle City Finalists. Of whom he was one, because he had acquired the locator cards.

And, apparently, a stab wound.

It was probably because of the painkillers, Ryou decided, that he was so fuzzy on the specifics of his own arrival.

It was good to see some familiar and friendly faces, at least. “Yuugi!”

Yuugi's friends didn't seem as happy to see him as Ryou would have hoped.

" _Is_ that you, Ryou?" One of them asked - Ryou could take a guess and say it was Honda asking, but there was a fifty-percent chance he would be wrong - sounding skeptical, accusatory.

In his state of disorientation, the logical conclusion Ryou came to was that someone was running around the airship impersonating everyone.

"Ryou Bakura, at your service," he said instead, shaking hands with everyone.

Yuugi gave him a grin, at least.

 

+1:

There is a boy sitting on a bench at his school’s courtyard, watching the branches of ornamental cherry trees sway in the gentle breeze. Underneath the ebb and flow of everyday emotions, thoughts and reactions that flare and die in moments, he feels a strange sense of detachment, as though he, too, might float away on the wind.

Another boy comes to sit next to him; his feet do not reach the ground, but sway as he considers his words.

“It’s… weird, isn’t it?” The newcomer asks, “That it’s finally all over?”

The first boy nods, hair shaking in front of his face as he moves. He almost smiles, but does not complete the expression – it does not reach his eyes.

“I feel…” The second boy hesitates over his words. “ _Light_. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, because I’m still kind of… sad about it.” He pauses: he knows that the other boy, the first boy, is _not_ sad about the most recent meaningful events that have transpired, but he also knows that he understands what he means more than any of his friends could hope to.

“But underneath the sadness, there’s this lightness, as if I could almost, I don’t know…”

“Float away.” The first boy completes the sentence, and the second looks relieved that he no longer will have to dominate the speaking.

“It’s called habituation.” The first boy’s voice is soft, but they are sitting close, and there is little background noise – there is no chance of the second boy mishearing him. “It’s the same reason that when you wear a watch, you only feel it for a while, and then it becomes stranger to have it off; it’s the same reason you don’t notice the weight of your hair until you cut it off.” He rubs his hand through his own hair, feeling the newly-short edges between his fingers. “You carry anything around for long enough, and your brain, your body, it thinks that’s your normal. So when things _do_ go back to normal, you don’t realize that’s how things were always meant to be.”

The second boy digests this, as they watch the blooms from the flowers on the tree come loose and flutter to the ground. He finally takes a breath, and says something that is half a reply, half honest curiosity.

“What do you think would have happened? I mean, if we hadn’t… found them. If I hadn’t completed the puzzle. If your father hadn’t sent you the ring.”

“If Malik hadn’t bucked thousands of years of tradition. If Duel Monsters had never taken off. If, if, if.” He sighs. “Do you know, in a deck of normal playing cards, if every star in the galaxy had a billion planets, and each of those planets had a billion people, and each of those people were able to shuffle a billion packs of cards a thousand times a second, they could have been doing that since the Big Bang and they still wouldn’t have gotten any repeats yet?” He pauses, to let that sink in. “And we both know Duel Monsters has a lot more than fifty-two cards. This is… that _was_ the hand we were dealt. There’s not much point speculating, really.”

The second boy isn’t satisfied with this answer. “Yes, but if you could… if you could go back in time, say, and stop it all from happening, would you?“

The first boy doesn’t respond verbally. He shakes his head, but the way he does, the second isn’t sure whether it’s an answer, or a refusal.

They watch the blossoms dance in the wind. Spring is in the air, and Ryou Bakura and Yuugi Motou have nothing around their necks.

**Author's Note:**

> I was considering giving each section its own title, but some of them just didn't really work. In the interests of completeness, they were:  
> 1: Children's Card Games  
> 2: Red Joker's worth 50 points  
> 3: Competition Watchdog  
> 4: Double Decker Checkerboard  
> +1: Game of Passing (On)
> 
> Pigs in a Barn is a very aggressive and disorganised version of Spoons that I was introduced to by some friends.


End file.
